Franklin Pierce

Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States, was born on November 23, 1804, in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, and served as president from 1853 to 1857. A lifelong Democrat and skilled lawyer, Pierce entered national politics at a young age and eventually served in both the House of Representatives and the Senate before becoming a brigadier general during the Mexican-American War. His presidency came at a particularly dangerous moment, when disputes over slavery and the expansion of the United States were rapidly intensifying. Although Pierce hoped that compromise and enforcement of existing agreements would preserve national unity, his administration instead became closely associated with the growing sectional crisis that preceded the Civil War.

Pierce grew up in a politically prominent New Hampshire family. His father, Benjamin Pierce, was a Revolutionary War veteran and served twice as governor of New Hampshire, giving the family considerable influence in the state. Franklin attended local schools before entering Bowdoin College in Maine at age fifteen, where he initially struggled academically but eventually applied himself and graduated fifth in his class in 1824. At Bowdoin he developed his considerable skills as a public speaker and became friends with Nathaniel Hawthorne, who would later write a campaign biography of him.

Pierce began his political career in the New Hampshire legislature in 1829 and quickly rose to become Speaker of the state House. In 1832, at only twenty-seven years old, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Jacksonian Democrat, and in 1837 he entered the U.S. Senate. He generally supported the Democratic positions of Andrew Jackson, including hard money and opposition to the national bank, while becoming increasingly hostile toward the abolitionist movement. Pierce resigned from the Senate in 1841 and returned to New Hampshire, where he established a successful law practice and became one of the state's leading trial lawyers. During the Mexican-American War, he served as a brigadier general under Winfield Scott and participated in the campaign against Mexico City, although a fall from his horse at the Battle of Contreras left him temporarily incapacitated.

Pierce unexpectedly became the Democratic nominee for president in 1852 after the party's convention deadlocked for forty-eight ballots. He defeated his former military commander, Whig nominee Winfield Scott, by an overwhelming 254–42 electoral vote margin. His presidency began under the shadow of personal tragedy: on January 6, 1853, just two months before his inauguration, Pierce and his wife Jane witnessed the death of their eleven-year-old son Benjamin in a train accident. As president, Pierce strongly supported the enforcement of the Compromise of 1850 and accepted the South's position on slavery in the territories. His administration supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which repealed the Missouri Compromise's restriction on slavery's expansion into the territories and led to violent conflict between proslavery and antislavery settlers in Kansas. Pierce also oversaw the Gadsden Purchase, which acquired additional territory from Mexico, but his handling of the sectional crisis badly damaged his reputation. The Democrats ultimately refused to renominate him in 1856.

After leaving the presidency in 1857, Pierce returned to New Hampshire and largely withdrew from public life. His political reputation deteriorated further as the country moved toward civil war; although he expressed support for the Union during the conflict, he remained a committed Democrat and openly criticized Abraham Lincoln's administration, even blaming Lincoln for the war. His views alienated many former friends and political associates, and he increasingly turned to alcohol as his personal life became more isolated. After Lincoln's assassination in 1865, an angry crowd surrounded Pierce's home, but he persuaded them to disperse peacefully through a speech.

Franklin Pierce died on October 8, 1869, in Concord, New Hampshire, at the age of sixty-four, and was buried in Old North Cemetery. His death attracted relatively little national attention, reflecting how far his reputation had declined after the presidency. Pierce's historical legacy is dominated by his failure to contain the sectional crisis and especially by his support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which helped intensify the struggle over slavery in the territories and contributed to the violence that preceded the Civil War. Historians generally rank him among the weaker American presidents, viewing his preference for party unity and compromise as inadequate for a nation confronting an increasingly irreconcilable conflict over slavery.